three months later, obama was saying the same thing. >> the difference is, america owes itself, right? when you look at who owns our debt, we own our debt. >> yeah. some of it is overseas. the main thing is that the debt's in dollars. we can't run out of cash. we print the stuff. >> right. >> and greece, the crucial thing is not so much that the debt is owned by non-greece as that the debt is in euros. that gives them way less flexibility. if you take a country like us, to me it's even hard to tell the story. you say, you know, supposed that we have a run on -- supposed that foreigners decide we're not reliable. how does that drive up interest rates? the fed controls short-term interest rates. long-term interest rates reflect expected short rates. how is that supposed to happen? the answer is actually it's not an easy story to tell. >> economics, news, politics. right now washington is run by politics. so they are in a budget-cutting mode. they are in a spending, cutting spending mode. how do they do that and not hurt the economy? >> well -- >> they're going do it, right? >> big spend